Bond In Motion – 50 Years of Bond Cars

When Sean Connery brought Ian Fleming’s James Bond to life in Dr. No in 1962, he did so in a petite Sunbeam Alpine series II convertible that, despite struggling to outrun an old Buick through a winding Jamaican mountain road, set the pace for what has become possibly the franchise’s most iconic symbol: the Bondmobile.

The London Film Museum is currently hosting Bond in Motion – which features 50 original vehicles from the 22 James Bond films so far, not all of them driven by the various Bonds: Die Another Day baddie Zao’s bright-green Jaguar XKR complete with grille-mounted machine guns, a rear-mounted Gatling gun, and boot-mounted mortars is here, as is the beautiful 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III driven by Goldfinger’s henchman and chauffeur Oddjob.

In addition to the cars on display (some of which are shown in their post-filming battle-worn state, with scrapes, missing windows, and ‘bullet holes’), there’s a host of scale models, original production art, intriguing props, and other ‘vehicles’, such as the floating crocodile that Roger Moore uses in 1983’s Octopussy, and the autogyro, named ‘Little Nellie’, that Sean Connery flew in 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

But it’s Bond’s own cars that drive the exhibit, including a Ford Mustang Mach I rarely seen since Bond put it on two wheels to navigate a narrow alleyway in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever and the unmistakable silver Aston Martin DB5, which debuted in 1964’s Goldfinger and went on to become arguably the most famous movie car in history.